This project will involve substantial research on the exceptional collections of Shakespearean and early modern drama material held by the National Library of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh Library. The research will be undertaken by the Principal Investigator in close collaboration with a Senior Curator in the Rare Books department at the National Library, and will provide the content and thematic structure for a major exhibition to be held at the National Library between November 2011 and February 2012. This exhibition, provisionally entitled 'Making Shakespeare: the Scottish Dimension', will be accessible to both academic and general audiences, and will be accompanied by educational materials for use by school students and their teachers. The research will also underpin a web feature to be launched at the same time, hosted indefinitely on NLS's open access website, which will allow visitors to browse digital copies of some items.\n\nThe research will be guided by four related principles. We aim to develop and deepen our understanding of the significance of particular items in the libraries' holdings and the histories of the various individual collections that make up those holdings. We are also seeking to understand the activities and attitudes of the collectors. Thirdly, we will use the fruits of these investigations to illuminate the processes by which the works of a Renaissance playwright became cultural treasures, and the practical ways in which that status was expressed and acknowledged; in so doing we will be contributing to the study of Shakespeare as a central and symbolic figure for Anglophone culture since the seventeenth century. Our fourth principle follows from this: we will be exploring the significance of the fact that these collections of materials by and about the English national poet, which to some extent derive their importance from that status, were partly gathered by Scots and are held in Scottish institutions.\n\nIn order to draw these principles together, the research will develop in two complementary directions. We will explore the significance of the bibliographical features of the early printed books that are the most prominent part of the holdings, asking what the evidence of the gathering, organizing and binding of these books can tell us about the patterns and purposes of collecting this material since the seventeenth century. At the same time, we will explore the contextual material relevant to these collections, looking in detail at the working notes, correspondence and other papers of those responsible for building them up. We have identified two individuals and a family from the 17th to 19th centuries who are central to the development of these collections, and whose papers and correspondence survive to an extent sufficient to furnish us with robust evidence. We will also look at the papers and contribution of John Dover-Wilson, Regius Professor of English Literature at Edinburgh from 1935 to 1945 and trustee of NLS, who helped to secure a significant proportion of both institutions' holdings. \n\nThe research will involve the fresh examination of these archival resources, and the study of materials relevant to the books and their collectors in other repositories elsewhere in Britain and, to a lesser extent, the USA. We will then have a deeper sense of the history of these collections, and of their place in the cultural history of Shakespeare, and we will also have identified the most striking and engaging items around which to build our exhibition. We will also carry the focus on the personalities of the collectors into the planning and design of the exhibition, with the aim of giving a series of faces and voices to the broader processes of cultural history we will be illuminating. In this way we aim to engage a wide audience with that history, and to provoke reflection on Shakespear's place in contemporary Anglophone culture in general, and in today's Scotland in particular.

In order to be effective, political texts must not simply inform their readers and convince them of the validity of the arguments being presented, but must prompt their readers' engagement with those arguments and even incite them to action. The authors of political texts published c.1500-1800 were particularly conscious of this requirement, perhaps partly because these texts were often read aloud and were designed to be 'experienced' rather than just read. To achieve this end they wrote in a wide range of genres; made use of an array of literary strategies - including playfully blending fact and fiction; exploited the physical form of the works they produced; and paid attention to the interaction between the written word, images and artefacts, and to how these objects circulated at political gatherings. Exploring these methods and considering how effective they were in achieving their ends has implications for the reading of those texts today, for the ways in which they are presented to modern audiences, and for the articulation of political arguments in the twenty-first century. This project involves the creation of a network that will draw together a range of humanities scholars with complementary skills enabling in-depth analysis of the strategies deployed by early modern political writers to engage their readers. Attention will be paid to the ways in which the genre and physical form of a text contributed to and reinforced its substantive argument and to the interaction between written texts and the wider material and political culture. The inclusion of software developers and library and archive professionals within the network will allow us to explore the implications of these findings for the presentation of early modern political texts in library catalogues, exhibitions, and modern digital editions. The digital form offers opportunities but also obstacles to the presentation of the materiality of early modern texts, yet questions of form often come as an afterthought in discussions of these texts. Consultation and co-creation with the wider public, through a monthly reading group and practical application of the findings in two public exhibitions, will be crucial in gauging how audiences engage with political texts today; the role that genre, literary devices, and the physical form of the text play in that process; and how texts can be presented in ways that reflect the intentions of their authors while also speaking effectively to modern readers. This engagement will ensure that the relevance of these findings for twenty-first-century society can be addressed, both in thinking about the relative advantages of print versus digital editions, and in using historical resources to develop strategies for fostering active citizenship today.

The central aim of the project is to produce a comprehensive account of the early development of cinema in Scotland. Where were the early films shown; who by and to whom? Where were cinemas built; by whom and with what success? What films did they show and who went to them? How did films circulate, and who distributed them. What kinds of film were (and were not) produced in Scotland? Who produced them? What succeeded and what did not? How did cinema grow as a business? In what ways did cinema, within thirty years, become a major cultural form? What were the differences between rural cinema and cinema as an urban phenomenon? How were the expectations of cinema defined; what social, cultural and aesthetic values were ascribed to it; and how was the experience of cinema described in the press and other sources?\n\nThe popularity of cinema in Scotland - and in Glasgow particularly - is legendary. Purpose-built cinemas began to appear in 1910, and by 1920 there were 557 cinemas in Scotland. By 1929, according to the historian, Christopher Harvie, Glasgow alone had 127 cinemas. Green's Playhouse, opening in 1927 had a seating capacity of 4,368, and was, by repute, the largest cinema in the world outside the USA. In 1939, according to Bruce Peter, there were 'a staggering 114 picture houses in Glasgow with a seating capacity in excess of 175,000, more cinema seats per head than any other city in the world.' \n\nAgainst this background, the absence of indigenously produced feature film is striking. In a period from 1915 to 1930, when the Irish Filmography lists around 30 Irish-produced fiction films, the Scottish record contains 6. In the same period, internationally, over 150 films have clearly identified Scottish themes; e.g. Bonnie Prince Charlie, Rob Roy, and Mary, Queen of Scots. \n\nThis disparity - between the popularity of cinema and the production of feature films; between the international market for Scottish stories and the apparent absence of a domestic industry which might sustain their production - points to a key element in the historical context for the research. \n\nMore broadly, the project addresses a fundamental gap in the historical record of Scottish culture, which is itself a disparity in current research: the disparity between the importance of cinema in 20th-century Scottish culture, the wealth of documentary evidence available in archives, and the lack of sustained academic research in uncovering, collating and making sense of this evidence. While early Irish cinema has been well surveyed in monographs and edited collections, while there are two monographs which address early cinema in Wales, and while the inventiveness of regional producers in Brighton, Sheffield or Blackburn is part of the international history of early cinema, research into history of the early cinema in Scotland is covered by a handful of articles and catalogue introductions.\n\nThis, then, will be the first major attempt to bring together systematically a range of resources and archive records in order to produce a comprehensive account of the beginnings of cinema in Scotland. It will cover production, distribution, exhibition and reception in order to understand the cultural, social and economic place of cinema in the early years of the twentieth century: the phenomenon which Francesco Casetti describes as 'the popularization of modernity and the modernization of popularity.' In this sense, the research will contribute to a more complex understanding of the cultural significance of the so-called 'silent period'. An understanding of the particular popularity of the 'cinema of attractions' in Scotland -- of 'shows', 'local topicals' and 'actualities' -- will add significantly to international research into film history and to the historical understanding of a period when it was not yet certain that cinema would become either a dominant form of culture, or, indeed, a narrative form of entertainment.

Sparked by Scottish International (Review) in 1968, a range of small independent magazines played a major creative role in Scottish literature, culture and politics over the next three decades. Fostered by the Scottish Arts Council, these titles featured (publicly subsidised) poetry and short fiction, and were the key venue in which writers, journalists and campaigners developed a shared agenda centred on Scottish cultural difference, literary revival and democratic dissent. Writing in Radical Scotland in 1983, George Kerevan noted that 'politics is no longer confined to the Establishment and Labourist agenda of economic tinkering. Cultural values represent a new Second Front'. The arena of this 'second front' was established - and gradually expanded - by titles such as New Edinburgh Review (from 1969), Chapman (1970), Crann-Tàra (1977), MsPrint (1978) and Cencrastus (1979). By the 1980s, these magazines had significant influence on the 'first' front - the field of electoral politics - in yoking together assertions of Scottish cultural identity and demands for constitutional change. Looking back, we can see post-1960s magazine culture as the laboratory in which the discourse and identity of the 'new' Scotland was experimentally debated, strategised and disseminated. These titles were also key sites of literary innovation, featuring work by every major and emerging Scottish poet of the period (Maclean, Morgan, Leonard, Lochhead, Jamie), short fiction by James Kelman, Janice Galloway, Iain Crichton Smith, and many others, and even the watershed of the modern Scottish novel, Alasdair Gray's Lanark. The same titles featured key essays and critical interventions by thinkers such as Tom Nairn, Isobel Lindsay and George E. Davie, influential debates on the marginalisation of women's writing, and were a key venue for the reassertion of Scottish folk traditions and the importance of Gaelic and Scots. Constant crossover between literary, cultural and electoral debate - from page to page and within the same article - is central to the interest and influence of these titles. To the extent that an earlier process of 'cultural devolution' paved the way for the new Scottish parliament in 1999, it can be directly witnessed in the writing, criticism and artwork of these magazines, and in the interpretive communities and political alliances which were formed around and through them. The study and re-discovery of these magazines matters: first, because they are the 'missing link' in recent scholarship on Scottish culture and politics, the neglected arena in which movements for literary identity and democratic renewal intersect and interact. These magazines also answer the strong public appetite to understand the cultural and intellectual strands that helped to form today's Scotland. They had far-reaching impact in post-1960s Scottish literature, politics and cultural life, but they are seriously overlooked in histories and literary studies of the period. To address these needs, our network brings together four key groups: - academic researchers (working in Scottish history, literature, politics, publishing) - editors, contributors, and readers of our target magazines - students, media and members of the public curious about Scotland's recent magazine heritage - experts in restoring comparable magazines to public life through digitisation The network will establish the resources and frameworks necessary to put these magazines firmly back on the map, potentially via a future digitisation programme (in partnership with the National Library of Scotland). Through our publications (including a taster 'megazine' reproducing the content and design of our target titles), we will boost the profile of these materials, stimulate new research directions, and consolidate the research field. Everyone interested in the intersection of cultural and political developments in recent Scottish history will benefit from this research and these resources.

This interdisciplinary project explores the legacies of Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific writing, investigating the relevance of his work to contemporary readers in Samoa, Scotland and Hawai'i, and producing new art and poetry inspired by the three short stories published in Stevenson's 1893 collection Island Nights' Entertainments. These include 'The Bottle Imp' and 'The Isle of Voices' - set in Hawai'i - and 'The Beach of Falesá', rooted in Stevenson's experience of Samoan culture. Given that educational institutions throughout the world are actively engaged in decolonising their curricula, Stevenson's work and legacy present a particularly valuable focus of inquiry. Stevenson became actively involved in supporting Samoan and Hawaiian indigenous sovereignty movements at a crucial period just before these islands were annexed by the US and Germany, and yet his Pacific fiction, while iconoclastic in featuring indigenous protagonists with considerable agency and dignity, and offering a critical proto-modernist perspective on western imperialism, still upholds many of the colonial stereotypes typical of fin-de-siecle western literature. This project is unique, in terms of: (a) developing a set of creative outputs and teaching resources emphasising the relevance of Stevenson's Pacific corpus to explorations of pressing contemporary issues such as globalisation, the transnational, climate change and sustainability, (b) exploring the rich and complex legacies that Stevenson's Pacific writing, and his historic presence in Hawai'i and Samoa, has left for contemporary Pacific communities, and (c) producing the first ever graphic adaptation of the three Island Nights' Entertainments stories, translated into Samoan and Hawaiian. Other outputs include new poetry by indigenous authors; a documentary film; an exhibition; a website; and various scholarly publications. The project contains three major disciplinary strands, focused around visual arts-based practice and research; literary/adaptation studies; and arts education/pedagogy. These inform various project activities and methods, including: 1) On-location and archival research into the environments, cultures and histories depicted in Stevenson's Pacific fiction, and the contexts in which his work was originally published and illustrated, so that the adaptation process takes due account of the fact that Stevenson's Pacific writing was inflected by a desire to develop a literary realism attuned to meticulous observations of Pacific cultures and places also documented in his Pacific travel writing, photography and painting 2) In recognition of Stevenson's own respect for Pacific traditions of cross-cultural reciprocity (informing his practice of sharing Scottish/European folk tales in exchange for narratives from indigenous Pacific interlocutors, and blending European and Pacific storytelling traditions in his writing), indigenous Pacific communities will be involved in every stage of our creative and research processes, using Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) methodologies, including: (i) semi-structured interviews exploring what Stevenson means to contemporary Pacific communities, as well as project artists/poets (ii) participatory arts workshops (run by project artists/poets in Samoa, Hawai'i and Scotland) enabling participants to produce an illustrated piece of creative writing engaging with Stevenson's literary legacy and/or the Pacific places/cultures depicted in his fiction (iii) involving Samoan interns in the making of a documentary film which will draw upon indigenous methodologies 3) Consultations with educators in Samoa, Hawai'i and Scotland that will inform the production of teaching resource packs, attuned to local pedagogical needs and appropriate age groups, to accompany our graphic novel. Partnerships with local educational organisations will enable us to pursue options for our resources to be adopted at national curricular level.